While we have heard that offline companies have now fallen in a rage to go online and sell their wares and build a marketplace, it’s safe to say that companies which primarily operated online are now looking to go offline. And how did this shift come to happen? The pandemic definitely opened up a lot of avenues and showed us how everything can be made available online, but we still wished to visit in-store and buy the things we wanted. The age-old brick and mortar store will never cease to exist and right from groceries to delivering any kind of service, offline still reigns the markets.
Here are a few reasons why Online companies now wish to go offline.
Touch & Feel experience
For starters, online companies do not exist in front of you and you are unable to see them in physical mode. And although shopping for clothes online has become a lot easier, the act of going into the store, having our favorite colored clothes being pulled out and wearing them in the trial rooms is an experience which no online shopping or augmented reality can offer. As a result, the touch and feel experience of viewing the products before buying them in person gains higher priority than purchasing them online.
Larger footprint
Being online definitely has the benefit that it exposes you to a wide audience but establishing an offline store ensures that you have set a footprint and are laying down the route to expanding your business in multiple locations. It gives you accessibility to multiple resources and allows you to build on your contacts while giving a physical location that consumers can associate you with. It allows you to build a physical identity that compliments your brand and represents what it stands for.
Building a better user experience
Building a consumer experience which allows high contact levels helps build a relationship with a potential consumer for any brand. This cannot be established in the online medium since one doesn’t know who is speaking to you behind a brand’s social media handle. As a result, a brand isn’t able to establish direct connect which would result in delivering a better user experience for a brand.
In a world where social distancing is still a norm and limited contact with each other is still advised, online stores understand the importance of delivering an in-person experience to their consumers. As a result, adopting a clicks to bricks model has now become a rampant trend in the post-covid world today.
